From Mom Guilt to Grace: What to Do After You Lose Your Temper

Ellen Krause: Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. I’m Ellen, your host, and today we’re talking about something that hits really close to home for so many of us, and that is how we respond when we’re overwhelmed.

Whether you’re a mom leading in your workplace or just navigating relationships day to day, I think we’ve all had those moments where we react in a way we wish we could take back. We lose patience, we snap, we feel the tension rising, and then afterward we’re left wondering, why did I respond that way? And how do I actually change? I really want to improve.

Well, today we’re not just talking about behavior modification or quick fixes. We’re really diving into what’s going on in our hearts and how the gospel meets us right there in the middle of our mess.

Janel Breitenstein: Thank you, Ellen. It is so great to be here.

Ellen Krause: What a joy to have you with us. I love you, Janel. Your work is just so refreshingly honest. You even call yourself the awkward mom, which I think so many of us could instantly connect with.

So for someone who’s new to you, how would you describe your heart behind your writing and your ministry?

Janel Breitenstein: I so appreciate that question, Ellen. A pastor one time, actually, was the host of Family Life Today, Bob Lepine. He affectionately called me a gospel junkie.

And, you know, I think maybe just because I’m so aware of my not only awkwardness, but just the ways I’ve totally messed up, that, man, I can’t get by without just trying to infuse what Jesus has done for us into our relationships.

And actually, I think a lot of that looks like emotional health in our relationships. I think it teaches us to love well and love differently. And I’m becoming a different person, coming out of probably some of the—even the evangelical church mores and what we were taught about appearances and different things like that—and trying to move more and more into just an authentic love for Jesus.

And what does that look like just on an average Thursday?

Ellen Krause: Yes, we all need that. You’ve spent decades in ministry and missions and now parenting. When you look back, how has God shaped you the most through motherhood?

Janel Breitenstein: Wow. Let me count the ways, right? I’m sure you can identify with that.

I had no idea the way I would be an entirely different human and an entirely different follower of Jesus, you know, based on what God wanted to do through these four little lives that felt like six, honestly. Would just—the overwhelm was real.

At one point, we had four kids under four at one point, and no twins. So you can do the math there. It was like running a preschool, but not getting paid.

Ellen Krause: Yes.

Janel Breitenstein: And, you know, as I look back to the kids I wanted to raise—and I still hold a lot of those very same goals—you’ll hear in some of my earlier writing, like I said, I want my kids to be—I used that phrase a lot—and I had big dreams and big feelings about it.

I think my goal has been broadened as well to just raising kids who love Jesus with their lives. That is, of course, still the goal. But I think I’ve also realized that more than perfect kids or even perfect parents, that this world needs parents and kids who understand their need for Jesus.

And I’ve learned how little control I actually have. Most moms and dads are probably nodding when they hear that—how little. I mean, we can definitely train up a child in the way he should go. But I love 1 Corinthians 3:6, where Paul is talking in that passage about, you know, some follow Paul, some follow Apollos.

And he points out that, you know, he planted, Apollos watered, but then he says something really critical. He says, but God gave the growth.

Ellen Krause: Mm-hmm.

Janel Breitenstein: And so neither he nor our plants, nor he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

And I realized how much, yes, we can cultivate for our kids. You will find—I wrote an earlier book on just spiritual life skills for kids and how we can teach those—but over and over there has been a theme of God just saying, you know, salvation belongs to our God. And that means all the things that he regenerates—that belongs to him.

Ellen Krause: Hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, you wrote a book called How to Stop Yelling Up the Stairs. I think a title that is definitely relatable to every parent. Can you share just maybe a personal moment from your own parenting journey that sort of captures the frustration you felt?

Janel Breitenstein: That’s right. Ha. You know, I don’t know if I’m the only parent who is like this, but when I speak to moms about mom anger, I ask how many of them didn’t know they had an anger problem until they had kids.

And honestly, then the ones who didn’t know they had a problem until they had kids, some of them are like, actually, I figured that out when I just got married. You know, and there’s something about being in these intimate relationships that just starts to reveal a new level of our sin and what happens when we feel out of control and what happens within our hearts.

Amy Carmichael said once—she talked about how a cup of sweet water can’t pour forth anything other than that sweet water, no matter how suddenly jostled.

And when I think of that, I think of Matthew 12:34, when Jesus says that it’s out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

So with seeing my anger, I realized, yeah, I used to think the problem was outside of myself.

In fact, maybe you’ll appreciate this, Ellen—when I was first married—I mean, thankfully, after 26 years, I’m still married to my best friend, and I’m really grateful for that. In those first six months, you would not have wanted to live on the other side of the cinder block duplex.

I was thankful for, like, a closet in between the two duplexes that hopefully would insulate the sound because we were arguing. And I remember literally telling my husband—I just said, you know what, I’ve never had this problem with anybody else, so the problem must be you.

You know, and that’s what I think we think as moms. Can you identify with that, Ellen? I should let you.

Ellen Krause: Yes, yes, completely, completely.

Janel Breitenstein: Yes, we think like, oh Lord, you know, the dog puked on the carpet, you know, and my husband forgot to pick up milk. So now I got to go strap all the kids in the car seats, and sure, some of them—some of them are going to have to go to the bathroom in the middle.

You know, we’re thinking that the anger lies outside of ourselves. And in that, we kind of surrender our capacity to change.

But you asked for an example from real life. When my son, Baden, was little—our oldest—he’d drawn this picture in red marker because that was his favorite color. And everything is red. And it’s in that great season where you don’t have to ask your kids, tell me about that. Like, I could actually tell what it was. We were flying kites.

Listeners, you can’t see me, but I have really curly hair. So I had this egg-shaped head in the picture, and there were like mattress springs coming out of my head. But my eyebrows were downturned, and he said, I made you look mad on accident, but you’re not mad in this picture.

And I said, am I usually mad? And he said, well, you’re mad a lot, but you’re not mad in this picture.

And my heart just—my heart just broke. You know, I mean, yes, you get it.

Ellen Krause: Yes.

Janel Breitenstein: I just—my heart broke just thinking of these kids thinking of their mom being mad a lot and realizing that they get one of their most central pictures of God from their parents.

And did they think God was mad at them all the time? And did they think that he responded to them like I responded to them?

And I remember reading an article at that time that said something to the effect of the angry emotions of mom and dad can incinerate the tender hearts of little kids.

And I wondered, I thought about my son Will, who had just watched The Magic School Bus on recycling, and I couldn’t even assign him the chore of emptying all the trash cans because he would cry because all the trash was going in the landfill.

And we recycled a lot, but you know, he had this tender heart. And I remember thinking, do I want my kids to have to protect parts of themselves from me?

And that was when I realized I needed to start looking my anger problem in the eye and calling it what it was.

Ellen Krause: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can remember on an occasion getting really upset about something and later just being like, Lord, please help them. I repent. Please help them not to remember that, because it was—it’s painful.

Janel Breitenstein: It’s—it is. The guilt is just so deep, isn’t it? And sometimes the shame, to the point that I think sometimes sweet moms don’t talk about it.

When I talk about this as a speaker, like, it becomes kind of this confessional. I laugh and I call it the fight club because even these meek mothers are looking around like, you too? Because we’re all carrying the ways we don’t allow others to see what’s actually happening in my home.

Like, I just yelled at a two-year-old who can’t even talk. That level of shame—sometimes it continues in our home because it’s not exposed to the light, and we’re not providing each other accountability, and we’re not offering each other the grace that we can show each other when we screw up.

Ellen Krause: Yeah, you know, one thing that was really interesting in your book that you mentioned is because maybe you’re listening to that and you’re thinking, well, I didn’t grow up, you know, with a lot of yelling in our house, which I personally didn’t.

But when you said the self-silencing—like, that’s another aspect of anger management that also can be very detrimental. Talk about that just for a little bit too, because both of those can be equally disruptive.

Janel Breitenstein: I so appreciate you bringing that up, Ellen.

When I started getting more forensic about my anger and trying to understand what was actually happening in me with my anger problem, I realized that part of that was a bit of poor theology, actually, because I believed in part of me that godly women didn’t get angry and couldn’t be portraying the image of God with any kind of anger.

And so I actually learned to just not say and not say. And actually, I think there was some poor theology in there too about my body. I had learned to really silence my body and things that I was feeling in order to please other people.

To the extent—I mean, mine was probably more severe—I was pretty close to an eating disorder in college. And I was also in college during the purity movement, which taught a lot about not listening to your body at all.

And so I wasn’t very good at listening to some of the signals that my body was giving. And so I was stuffing and stuffing and stuffing until I had raced past any kind of signals that my body was giving me and now was shotgunning my anger at my children.

And I think, you know, your original question of just self-silencing—there’s some very interesting scientific evidence that women especially are very prone to this self-silencing, where we might think that we are overlooking, which is obviously very biblical in Proverbs—it’s to a man’s glory to overlook an offense, or to a woman’s glory to overlook an offense.

But so often, we aren’t actually overlooking, we’re not actually forgiving—we’re actually stuffing and not dealing.

And the statistics on that—the increased cardiovascular risk, the increased risk of all these other severe health issues—that women actually die considerably earlier who practice a great deal of self-silencing.

And what is this doing to our bodies when we’re choosing to not look the emotions that God gave us in the eye and meet him there? We’re just pretending like we don’t have them at all.

Ellen Krause: Right, right. And I know I could definitely relate to that because that was just more of my home environment. And I did have the eating disorder, and all these things—when I was reading all of your information about it, it was like, I can relate, I can relate, I can relate.

But yes—but at the same time, what I really loved was the fact that—

Janel Breitenstein: I knew we would be friends, Ellen.

Ellen Krause: I personally went through a lot of counseling, which helped reteach me how to more appropriately express myself.

And I love in your book too that you recommend also that that could potentially be a step that someone would take to get help.

Janel Breitenstein: Hmm. Yes, for sure. And it’s been a big part of my journey too, so I applaud you for doing it.

It was time for me to really start digging into my heart together with the Lord—not unlike we see David doing in the Psalms and even like we see Jesus doing in Gethsemane.

We see him identifying emotion, you know—I’m overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. You know, he tells his friends that and identifies and looks for community.

And he also manages that emotion and shepherds that—you know, not I will, but you will. And he’s willing to take his biggest fight, flight, freeze moments—you know, we know he’s sweating blood at that point—and he’s willing to be completely honest about not only what he’s feeling, but what he wants.

And yet still manage that toward Jesus—what an example—or toward God. What an example for me, somebody who has not been able to look my feelings and desires in the eye.

Ellen Krause: Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things that I kind of highlighted when I was reading was where you said that anger is known to be a secondary emotion and what is likely underneath it.

And actually, your example here—you say, if you picture an iceberg, anger is the part you can see, but beneath the water line might be the primary emotions like the following.

And I just want to read these off to our listeners because it’s something that you can be mentally sort of, you know, pinging yourself for if you’re feeling these things:

Rejection, disappointment, injustice, hurt, embarrassment, sadness, helplessness, jealousy, guilt, shame, depression, isolation, and fear.

Like, it gives you some insight into what might be more at the root. Would you—is that how you would kind of classify that?

Janel Breitenstein: Oh, for sure. I’d be curious to hear what you feel is underneath a lot of yours, Ellen.

Underneath mine, I think exhaustion was a huge factor. I feel like exhaustion made maybe a four-foot fuse into like a four-centimeter fuse in me.

And I also feel like fear is just a big one for me. And I feel like God sometimes accentuates that in—like in the New Testament here—you are Sarah’s daughters if you do not give way to fear, and how much fear is just—as people who are physically weaker than men—and also, we just realize how little is in our control.

As you and I talked about earlier in this call, it’s intimidating to be a parent. It’s a scary thing. I think there’s a secular author who said that having kids is like having parts of your heart running around outside your body, you know? And that’s what it feels like.

So I think a lot of my anger is from exhaustion or fear or even shame. You know, like I’m embarrassed by what my kids are doing, but it’s not just embarrassed—I feel unacceptable and not enough because of—I must not be a good mom and all those things.

But what about you, Ellen? Which one of those—are there any of those that you particularly identified with?

Ellen Krause: Yeah. Yeah. Mm.

Well, for starters, I agree with you on the fear. And for the longest time—for years—taped onto my computer monitor, I had Second Timothy 1:7, which says, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of sound mind. And that would just encourage me so much.

I think another one for me was definitely kind of related to fear, but at the same time, like worried about what other people are going to think, you know, when your kids are going haywire, you know—which is, you know, not important—but I didn’t at the time. I’ve grown a lot since then. But yeah, I think that.

Janel Breitenstein: Yes. Yes. Yeah—people-pleasing. I can really relate to that, yes.

Ellen Krause: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, for someone who is struggling with anger and maybe has lost their temper, can you walk us through like a real-life example of maybe some tips of how they can recover well?

Janel Breitenstein: Yeah, I really appreciate the endeavor there.

And first of all, for that mom, I wish I could kind of sit down and actually have a latte with her and just look her in the eyes and just proclaim God’s compassion over her.

Because sometimes, in the ways that we talk to ourselves as moms, I don’t know that it repeats the gospel to ourselves. I think it’s almost as if we feel like shame and maybe just a little more guilt is really what will get us under control—if we really internalize how bad we’ve screwed up.

And if we continue to revisit the consequences on ourselves in different ways, that maybe we’ll be better next time.

And, you know, I guess I see a pattern in especially the New Testament, but in the Old as well, that like Romans 2:4 says it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. You know, it’s this overwhelming understanding and internalization of his love.

In 1 John 4:18, it says, you know, the one who fears is not made perfect in love. So rather than creating more fear around this—you know, where it says, the rest of that verse is fear has to do with punishment—instead, are we speaking God’s kindness to ourselves?

And then I would just also say, I mean, with all these memories I have of—you know, with every time—well, you mentioned earlier, Ellen, you’re like, I hope my kid isn’t making memories at this point. I hope they don’t remember me being angry.

And I will say that my kids do have memories of me being angry, probably. But what I wanted to commit to was that for every memory of me messing up and losing it with my kids, that they would also have a memory of me repenting and creating a culture in our house of, I’m sorry, will you forgive me?

And that need for Jesus that we talked about earlier—that this is a gospel opportunity.

And I think that’s—you asked me earlier about my heart for writing the book—my journey through mom anger has been extremely powerful because I realized that in conflict in our homes, we are replaying what God did for us in our conflict with him.

Because it’s this opportunity when we are distant from him—you know, we see Romans 5:8, that when we were yet his enemies, when we were sinners, he died for us. He went to close the gap.

And covenant love in conflict reaches toward each other rather than away, and it seeks repentance. It seeks not to deny—

Ellen Krause: Beautiful.

Janel Breitenstein: —what happened or deny the truth, but to call sin what it is and then to go to the cross together.

So that’s more of the theology behind your question of what’s going on there—just that I feel like we have this chance to replay the gospel.

I think you’re also talking about, okay, so how can we also practically, you know, start putting on the brakes?

And one of my favorite analogies to share—which is actually about something you will never find me writing a book about—is potty training. I was a terrible potty trainer because I had four kids four and under, like I told you.

And like, I was just trying to keep it so that I wouldn’t have three in diapers—I would only have two, right? So I think I was always trying to potty train to get somebody out of diapers. And so it just took me forever.

But the one thing that I did take away from potty training that has actually helped me in my anger, believe it or not, is there are kind of three general steps for potty training, okay?

It’s first of all, the child realizes, I just went—that just happened. I just lost control, you know?

And then they realize, I’m going—it’s happening right now.

And then they finally realize, this is about to happen—I need to find a bathroom.

And so my suggestion is actually, parents, that you would consider potty training your anger.

And in doing that, I think first of all, it’s realizing what just happened and that kind of step that we talked about—about getting forensic about anger and understanding, why did I get angry?

Was I extremely tired? Was I attempting too much?

For me, one of my triggers was actually Bible study. This is terrible, but I would think something like, well, when we get back, the kids are going to need to take a nap. So during lunch, I want to unload the dishwasher so I don’t have to do that when they’re taking a nap.

But then I think, but I got to go around and I kind of collect all the dishes, you know, all the sippy cups to put them in the dishwasher. And I would go right up to the edge of Bible study time to leave.

And then, you know, that kid you just potty trained and put a pull-up on—they poop in the pull-up, and your daughter has lost the three-inch shoe somewhere in the house.

And because I’ve attempted to do so much before Bible study, my kids actually didn’t see Jesus because I wasn’t allowing a simple thing like margin.

And so which was more important at the time—that I get the dishwasher started with all the dishes in it—or is it perhaps more godly if I do the work of just margin?

And so for me, potty training my anger meant understanding how all this happened in the first place. And was I maybe putting even just achieving and finishing my to-do list above what was wise and loving for my kids?

But before I talk about the other steps, I want to make sure I’m not talking too long.

Ellen, do you have thoughts about that? I should let you respond in there.

Ellen Krause: I completely concur. Love that. Continue.

Janel Breitenstein: I think part of realizing that this is happening—I am losing my anger or losing my control—is also just, again, being body aware, you know, understanding the things that are happening in our bodies, like I talked about.

But I think it’s also realizing how God made our brains and that in that fight, flight, freeze moment—even if it’s just a little bit adrenaline elevated—as we start to get more into fight, flight, freeze, neurotheologian Jim Wilder calls this enemy mode because it actually disconnects us from other people and disconnects us from ourselves.

Because we have that prefrontal cortex that sits on top of kind of the more primal parts of our brains—it actually disconnects, you know—and we actually can’t connect very well in that state to the Holy Spirit.

And so I think it’s interesting that I kind of call that prefrontal cortex that helps us with emotional impulse control and problem solving, planning, things like that—I call that the image of God part of our brains because animals don’t have that, and toddlers continue to grow that. It’s not even fully developed till kids are 25 or 30 years old.

And so I think it’s interesting that that kind of unifies us—that part of our brain—it unifies us with others, with ourselves, and with God, helps us keep in step with the Spirit.

And so my thought is, in the middle of all that, is it sometimes more holy if we can step away? Can we get control? Because it takes 20 to 60 minutes to get out of fight, flight, freeze—and that means for our kids too.

Obviously, sometimes our kids need immediate discipline, but I don’t know about you, Ellen—I do not find the holiest version of myself in fight, flight, freeze, typically.

So those are some of the steps that I would say is being answered.

Ellen Krause: Right, right, agree. Yeah.

Janel Breitenstein: Being able to get away, starting to understand what are the maybe even the family patterns or past traumas or past patterns and goals and desires in my heart.

James 4:1 says, is it not the passions within you that cause you—you that are warring? Understanding the passions that drive us to anger and using those to actually eventually find the gospel in our relationships and how God speaks to those longings we feel.

Ellen Krause: Most definitely. Honestly, the only thing I would really add to that is the power of prayer, which you, you know, throughout this—you know, looking at Jesus and God as our role model of someone who exhibited self-control and who was slow to anger—and praying, Lord, please help me to be more like Jesus.

Janel Breitenstein: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Ellen Krause: And I feel like that’s a prayer he loves to hear, right? It’s a heart that aligns with his heart.

And honestly, like you said, repenting of when we’ve blown it and asking God for help—that would be just the one tip I would add.

Janel Breitenstein: I love that.

And I think in my own prayer—and you’ll find at least one other story in the book—I interviewed different moms on their particular kind of anger DNA, and there’s a mom in there, Erica, who talks about how prayer was such a part of her journey.

And I think she and I have both found that rather than God changing us immediately toward that anger journey, it was the process—almost like springtime—where it’s just this slow miracle, you know?

And he continues to renew us in each argument, in each conflict, in each time when we’re at our wits, because I think rather than just the Red Sea parting, that he actually wants to do long-lasting change in us, and he’s willing to do the hard work to make that happen.

Ellen Krause: Yeah, yeah, he sure is. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy, but we know that his outcome is the outcome that we want.

Janel Breitenstein: Yeah, for sure.

Ellen Krause: Well, as we start to wrap things up here, Janel, for the mom who is maybe feeling stuck, you know, in that yelling cycle—maybe feeling the shame—how would you encourage her today?

Like each day is a new day. One thing I always do with my kids, you know—and I think it could even, you know, work in circumstances like this too—I would always say, would you like to start our day over?

Janel Breitenstein: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ellen Krause: You know, and no matter what time of day it was, in that—that emotional setting free and letting go—like after you’ve acknowledged, you know, that we’ve had a situation, it was so helpful.

But what would you say to that mom?

Janel Breitenstein: I think that’s such great advice.

Because I think what I hear you saying, Ellen, is just the hope of Jesus’s goodness—that he is not about stuckness. In fact, when people might have thought he was ultimately stuck in death, he had an empty tomb planned, and Saturday—when everybody didn’t have hope—they didn’t know that the next day he had planned resurrection.

And I think that’s something that we can even restate to our kids in discipline—is just a hopefulness that God is doing a great work in them and that this—

I mean, if you were disciplining your child, hopefully you would never be like, now this is who you are and you’re stuck there. No, we have the chance to speak God’s goodness to them, even in discipline, that Jesus is doing good things in them.

And kids, this is what God looks like when we screw up.

And so the mom out there who is just feeling overwhelmed by her anger journey and the ways that maybe she’s hurt her kids—I think of even what Joseph said to his brothers.

Now I can say with almost complete confidence that your family is not as dysfunctional as Joseph’s. Remember, his brothers sold him into human trafficking—okay, into slavery.

Okay, I mean, and you look at what was happening with the 12 sons of Jacob, there was some really bad stuff, you know? And not only that, I mean, we even see an arrogance in Joseph before he went to Egypt.

But what does he say in Genesis 50:20? He says, you intended this for evil—he’s very honest with his brothers about what they intended—but God intended this for good, for the saving of many lives.

And if you look at the slow miracle God was creating in that family, that at the end of the story, his brothers are actually protecting their brother, saying, no, don’t send him to prison—send me.

God had a resurrection for a family that was much darker than yours.

And we can continue to speak God’s hope and the fact that his mercies are new every single morning—tailor-made to your family, at your zip code, your address.

He is ready and waiting for good mercies because sin doesn’t get the last word. Jesus is greater, and hope—hope is greater.

Ellen Krause: Amen. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you, Janel, and your new book, How to Stop Yelling Up the Stairs?

Janel Breitenstein: My book is available any place that books are sold—so Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target.

And if you want to find out more about me, I’d love to meet you at the-awkward-mom.com or JanelleBrightonstein.com if you really want to go find out how to spell that.

I love to connect with listeners. Seek out and find me. I would love to hear from you, and I’d love to hear about your own anger journey and what God’s doing in your home or what you long for him to do.

Ellen Krause: Absolutely, and we will include all of those links in our show notes to make it very easy for you to click over there.

Before I let you go, Janel, I have to ask you our favorite questions here at Coffee and Bible Time.

What is your go-to Bible, and what translation is it?

Janel Breitenstein: Bring it on. That’s great.

You know, I am still using this morning—I think it’s probably at least 15 years old—but I use the ESV Journaling Bible because I love to do notes everywhere.

And I love even the effect of being able to see what God’s been doing in my life. I have dates all over the place of certain scriptures I’ve prayed at different times.

And praise God that I can see those answers 10 years later, 15 years later, and I can see how God’s been growing me and what he said to me at different times that I may even have forgotten.

So I am a big fan of the ESV Journaling Bibles—not gonna lie.

Ellen Krause: Yes, okay, an excellent, excellent choice.

And this is really related—do you have any favorite Bible journaling supplies that you like to use when you journal? Any special pens or what have you?

Janel Breitenstein: I keep a journal, and I don’t know that this is a special supply, but I will say there’s a bit of a routine that I really like—writing out scripture.

I have a friend of mine who put upon himself the discipline of writing out the entire gospels and just how he loved how that changed him.

Ellen Krause: Mmm.

Janel Breitenstein: And so I’ve gotten into a habit—actually since I was in college—I have found a lot of value in how much I can meditate on scripture when I’m having to write it out word by word.

And then I think a lot of that time I just use to praise God and kind of center myself on God rather than just on the things that sometimes in my life capture my vision more than God’s greatness.

And then, so I kind of follow that up with a list of gratitudes—whether really tiny things or really large things. I try to do those before any kind of petition.

I don’t want to be legalistic about that. Sometimes my brain is just going where it’s going, and God wants to meet me there.

But I think sometimes that kind of centering in God’s word and that gratitude helps me to—

Ellen Krause: Yeah.

Janel Breitenstein: —to pray maybe with my feet more grounded. And Jesus shows us that in the Lord’s Prayer.

Anyway, that’s not a really great answer to your question, because it’s not an actual tool.

Ellen Krause: No, I love that answer. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. I might have to change the question. Like—yeah, I love that.

What is your—this is the last question—what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?

Janel Breitenstein: You know, it’s one that’s probably fairly popular. I like Bible Hub because I can keep it on my phone, and it’s got a Greek and Hebrew lexicon as well as a commentary.

So I like just that when I’m on the run or when I’m in my quiet time, I can dig very deeply into how God said this in the original languages.

And Bible Hub just has access to so many other versions as well, so I think it just fleshes out my understanding a lot more.

Yeah, Bible Hub would be my pick.

Ellen Krause: All right, very good. That’s a great choice too.

Well, Janel, thank you so much for being here today. It was just such a joy to talk to you.

Janel Breitenstein: This is my pleasure—so mutual.

And listeners, I’m praying for you right now that God will do great things in your homes and through your knowledge of Him. I know that He’s given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who calls us.

Ellen Krause: Thank you, Janel.

And to our listeners, even in those tense moments where you feel like you failed or fallen short, God’s grace is still present and He is still at work in your heart.

Growth doesn’t happen all at once, but as we just continually walk with Him, He really does change us from the inside out.

Thank you so much for spending this time with us. If this episode has encouraged you, we would love it if you would just pass it on to someone who needs this today. You know who they are.

I don’t think they’ll take offense because we all want to grow in Christ, so we’d appreciate that so much.

And we will see you next time on the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.